Stepmother
by Iniga
Summary: Five times Temperance Brennan was unnerved by Parker Booth, and one time she wasn't. Tags to The Man in the Fallout Shelter; The Santa in the Slush; The Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; The Twisted Bones in the Melted Truck; The Warrior in the Wuss; High Treason in the Holiday Season. Long oneshot. Complete.


Stepmother

 **Summary** : _Five times Temperance Brennan was unnerved by Parker Booth, and one time she wasn't._

 **Spoilers** : _Through Season 11._

 **Disclaimer:** _I don't own Bones. In a few instances, specific dialog is quoted from the episodes named in the section titles. I don't own that either._

* * *

 _1\. The Man in the Fallout Shelter (S1)_

Sometimes, in the course of a scientific study, a new piece of evidence twisted the whole body of research into something completely at odds with what it had been a moment before.

That could happen with people, too.

Normally Brennan didn't waste much time evaluating people. In particular, she cared whether her professional colleagues were performing their work appropriately and respecting her own significant contributions. Their thoughts and feelings and motivations belonged to them alone and were none of her business.

Angela was an exception. Brennan missed Angela when she was gone, allowed Angela to comment on Brennan's own personal life, and wanted Angela's happiness… Although perhaps not so much that she was willing to attend a ridiculous Christmas party or take part in an even more ridiculous exchange of Christmas presents.

Agent Booth was another exception. She didn't care about his happiness the way she cared about Angela's. She didn't think that she would miss him if he vanished, although she would regret the loss of the opportunity to broaden her skills as a forensic anthropologist that his presence offered. She wasn't even certain that she _liked_ him.

And yet, she found herself trying to figure him out. She'd thought that he fit the mold of the other FBI agents she'd met with his utter disdain for science and scientists; then he'd quite literally chased her through the city begging her to work with him. She'd thought that he was blindly macho, a typical alpha male counting the notches on his gun; then he'd told her about his quest to catch as many murderers as lives he'd taken during his time in the military. She'd thought that he was squeamish, not hardened in the way required to scrape the remains of a human being off of the inside of a car after it exploded; then he'd stood there with an evidence bag, every bit as calm as Brennan.

She'd written him into her novel as the arrogant, whining, aggressive Agent Andy before she'd known what she was doing. Something about Booth nagged at the edges of her consciousness and demanded study and explanation.

All along, Angela had argued that Brennan ought to have sex with Booth, but that was only because Booth with singularly attractive and Angela thought that everyone ought to have sex with everyone else. Angela's insistence that Booth liked Brennan and Brennan liked Booth, Brennan wrote off as one of Angela's many eccentricities.

Lately even Dr. Hodgins had started to imply that Brennan had some sort of interest in Booth beyond the professional. _He's just like the other FBI agents_ , Dr. Hodgins warned coldly and with real distaste, as if Brennan had somehow betrayed her Jeffersonian colleagues by allowing for the possibility that Booth was a decent human being at his core.

That was what made it all the stranger that Dr. Hodgins was the one who casually prompted her to rethink Agent Booth yet again. Dr. Hodgins, who had gotten all of them quarantined in the lab over Christmas in the first place, took it upon himself to scold her for refusing to take part in the ludicrous Secret Santa proceedings.

"I mean Goodman doesn't get to see his family," Dr. Hodgins lectured, as Brennan walked away, half paying attention. "Zack doesn't get to see his family. Booth doesn't get to see his son. At least I'm an accidental Grinch; with all due respect, you're the Grinch on purpose."

The new information was hidden, nonchalantly dropped in a stream of old information for which she had no use, as new information so often was.

 _Booth doesn't get to see his son._

She had been working with Booth almost every day for months. Sometimes they were together for hours on end, just the two of them, confined to his government-issued vehicle as they wound through the notorious Washington traffic. She had been in his office. She had been in his apartment. She had seen him almost completely naked.

She had never heard him call or mention a son. She had never seen a photograph or a stray toy or a scribbled crayon drawing. (The child couldn't be too old, could he?)

"I have no idea what you are saying to me," she told Dr. Hodgins.

"The Grinch is a relatively well known creation of a children's author named Dr. Seuss," he explained, which did her no good. For once, she'd understood the pop culture reference. Her father and her brother had liked the Grinch and had sat her down to listen to or watch his exploits on more than one December evening during her early childhood. That didn't matter, though, because she was never going to see her father or Russ again, and she wasn't going to see their stupid children's book, either. She wouldn't have to had to have seen Christmas at all if Dr. Hodgins had been responsible enough to refrain from drinking in the lab.

 _Booth doesn't get to see his son._

She knew the Grinch. She could picture him in her mind. She couldn't picture Booth's son.

"Listen, I got Angela for my Secret Santa thing and what I want to do is blow up a microscopic imagery of a toxic mold, stachybotrys chartarum, because I know she's interested in digital fractology. I though that might appeal to her aesthetically, do you agree?"

Dr. Hodgins was taking time out from bragging about the masseuse with whom he had intended to spend Christmas having a marathon sexual encounter to indulge his long-running crush on Angela. Brennan wasn't interested.

 _Booth doesn't get to see his son._

Brennan was distinctly interested.

"I'm not really who you want to talk to about…Booth has a kid?"

"You didn't know?" he asked, as surprised as she was that he should know more about Booth than she did. She didn't know whether she liked Booth; Booth and Hodgins were certain that they couldn't stand each other.

"No."

"I wasn't the one who told you," he said, and he was gone.

* * *

"Wait, you have a son?" she asked Booth, direct and simple and to the point when their paths crossed on the balcony above the lab.

"Yeah." He offered nothing more. Usually parents seemed more than willing to volunteer everything from age to height to intelligence level to the adorable thing he'd done the other day that wasn't actually adorable to anyone else.

"You've never mentioned that," she said. Booth had told her repeatedly that she should share her life with other people and show interest in theirs. She was trying. He wasn't cooperating.

"Well, nothing brings people together like a Christmas lung fungus," Booth concluded without so much as producing a photograph.

Why on earth did she want to see one?

They had more than enough to think about thanks to the mystery of the man in the fallout shelter, but Brennan was perfectly capable of thinking about two things at once.

Booth could have fathered the child as a high school student, or last year, or any time in between. The child might be mostly grown or he might be an infant. The only thing that was certain was that Booth, for all his proud Catholicism, had had a child with a woman to whom he was not married. Who was she, then? A long term girlfriend? A one-night stand? Had it been love, as Booth defined it, or a more practical expression of a physical need?

He obviously did not have primary physical custody or Brennan would have heard of this boy before. She probably would have seen him in the flesh by now. However, Booth was obviously an involved parent. Missing Christmas with his son was a very big deal.

A parent missing Christmas with a child was always a big deal. She knew that better than anyone.

When the others lined up for visiting hours, Brennan secreted herself off to the side to watch. Angela and her father; Dr. Goodman and his children; Zack and his parents and siblings and nieces and nephews.

And Booth and a beautiful little boy who could not have been more than four years old.

Automatically, she registered that the child had been lucky enough to inherit his father's unusually even bone structure. The father was a handsome man, and so too would the child be. That was good. Physically attractive people entered the world with a host of advantages.

Booth walked to the glassed-in viewing area with his arms folded in his face set in a scowl. Brennan was used to both the posture and the facial expression, as they were often directed at her.

The moment he saw his son, his entire body changed. Every muscle relaxed; his face lit with a grin as he dropped to his knees so that he would be eye-to-eye with the little boy. He toyed with the earpiece and held his hand to the glass, and Brennan saw that the boy saw this as an adventure and not a cause for fear. From the other side of the glass, he beamed.

Booth was a good father. She could tell.

Then the child was led away, sadly, and Booth stood and crossed his arms again.

Finally, at the end, she heard him call his son by name.

 _Parker_.

It was a nice name. It was a beautiful name, even, a beautiful name for a beautiful child. To her surprise, Booth hadn't chosen a Biblical name, but Parker was a name for a strong man, a name given to gamekeepers in Medieval times. Somehow she doubted that Booth knew that. The name was growing rather common, though; perhaps the boy's mother had chosen it.

(It was three years and two serial killers later that Booth told her, unbidden, about Teddy Parker. She was glad, then, that she had never asked even after she had gotten into the habit of asking him the most personal of questions. It was a story that needed to be told without pressure or prompting.)

The next time they talked, she told him, sincerely, that she was sorry that he hadn't gotten Christmas with his little boy. He thanked her, and he must not have been too angry with her because he told her to meet him at Wong Fu's if she wanted company.

He might have overheard her telling Angela about the Christmas her parents had disappeared. He might have felt sorry for her and invited her an inch further into his life in response. She might have been okay with that.

At Wong Fu's, they discussed the case and the robot that Zack had given Booth to give to Parker.

"That weirdo assistant of yours just made me the coolest dad in the world," said Booth. Brennan, for all her childlessness, knew perfectly well that being the coolest parent in the world had nothing to do with whether a parent gifted a child with a one-of-a-kind robot designed by a one-of-a-kind genius. But she appreciated that Booth _wanted_ Parker's love and admiration. The man who was immune to the warnings of his superiors and the threats of his suspects and the intellect of the Jeffersonian was vulnerable to someone after all, and that someone wasn't even forty inches tall.

That was when Parker himself ran in, even more mesmerizing in person than he had been through the glass, and screaming delightedly for Booth. " _Daddy! Daddy!"_

It was one more contradiction in the man she didn't understand. Patient and impatient. Arrogant and humble. Smart and stupid. Fearless and afraid. A macho playboy and a gentle, loving _daddy_.

Booth swept Parker into a hug and a kiss.

Belatedly, Brennan's brain made a connection. Sid, the proprietor of Wong Fu's, had been the one to bring Parker to the Jeffersonian to see his father through the window during the quarantine. She had been slightly disappointed not to spy the boy's mother, as she was quite curious as to what kind of woman had had a child with Booth. Now, it seemed that Wong Fu's was the chosen place for exchange of custody so that the two parents never had to come face-to-face. Perhaps that was why Booth had been so adamant that he did not want anyone from the Jeffersonian to patronize Wong Fu's. It was more than just a restaurant to him. It was a part of his life that he had chosen to keep private until now.

After Parker and Booth had thoroughly examined Zack's robot and turned to leave, Booth stage-whispered a direction in Parker's ear. "Can you say Merry Christmas?"

"Merry Christmas," chirped Parker. If Brennan had been the kind of person who believed that hearts melted (the heart was a muscle and muscles didn't melt)...

She waved at Parker and Parker waved back, a tiny moment of connection with a small child who was the most important person in at least one person's life.

She still couldn't say, with absolute certainty worthy of publishing her results, that she liked Agent Booth.

But one shy wave from the tiny hand that wasn't clutching Zack's robot was all it took for her to know, beyond all doubt, that she liked Parker Booth.

Later that day, after waiting more than a decade, she opened the Christmas presents that had been wrapped for her when she had last been the most important person in someone's life.

Her parents, like Booth with Parker, had gotten her just the right thing.

 _2\. The Santa in the Slush (S3)_

Two Decembers later, Brennan again found herself unable to avoid the monstrosity known as Christmas. This time, the fault didn't lie with Hodgins' recklessness and an obscure lung fungus that might cause a pandemic.

No, this time her father and Russ were the source of the problem.

They had come most unexpectedly back in her life and they weren't going to disappear again… at least, not while they were incarcerated. That was how incarceration worked, after all.

Somehow (she was never going to understand Caroline and she didn't think that she cared to do so) she had been lured into forcing Booth to kiss her under the mistletoe in order to obtain a conjugal trailer for a "family Christmas." Christmas trees, she learned, were against the rules.

For once, Booth was looking forward to Christmas even less than Brennan was. He was going to be without Parker again, and for him there could have been nothing worse.

Then Parker ran away from his babysitter and informed a policeman that his daddy worked for the FBI.

Brennan was more than slightly impressed by Parker's plan. A six-year-old had very little control over his world, but Parker had managed to subvert the holiday plans that his mother had made and his father had reluctantly rubber-stamped.

She loved Booth for caring more about his son's happiness than his own. Still, she wondered, sometimes, whether Booth was right not to assert his parental rights more aggressively. He was a _wonderful_ father. The one time that she had discussed the subject of Parker with Rebecca, she had gotten the impression that Rebecca limited Booth's contact with Parker not out of meanness but because Booth never asked for more.

There was nothing like an adolescence spent in foster care to teach someone that you didn't get anything if you didn't ask for it, but Brennan knew better than to point that out for Booth. He would just tell her that she didn't understand because she'd never had a child of her own and therefore was not a fully actualized human being.

In any case, that Christmas Booth got Parker; Brennan got a trailer full of her father, brother, and soon-to-be-sister-in-law and nieces.

The only thing missing was a tree, but of course Booth and Parker would find a way around that.

She had taken a nasty drink of the bootleg liquor her father had made under his prison mattress, because of course he had, when her phone rang. It was Booth. She always answered when Booth called, even if she was in a conjugal trailer celebrating what Max deemed the best Christmas in sixteen years.

"So," said Booth, "we figured we'd call and wish you a little Yuletide cheer." This time Parker, less shy with the experience of two more years on the planet, yelled his _Merry Christmas, Bones!_ into the phone with no prompting that Brennan could discern.

"Hey, listen, Bones, I got a little something for you," said Booth when he reclaimed his phone.

"Oh, I got you something too," said Brennan immediately. Between Booth and Angela and Max and Russ, Brennan could no longer refuse to exchange Christmas gifts, even if everything she'd used to say about how anthropologically gifts were about asserting dominance was true.

"Go to the window and open up the blinds, now," Booth directed.

She did as he asked, and there were Booth and Parker, a brightly lit tree plugged into the car's battery.

This time, Parker waved at her first, and she waved back. Emma and Hayley screamed with delight.

"I love my gift, Booth," she told him.

"Merry Christmas, Bones," he answered.

* * *

When the excitement was over, Emma and Hayley wanted to know all about the man and the boy who had made sure that they would have a Christmas tree. Emma and Hayley were unusually sensitive children; between the absence of their biological father and Hayley's cystic fibrosis, they would have been hard-pressed to avoid being so.

"I have a gift for Booth," she mused aloud after sharing Booth's and Parker's stories with her pseudo-nieces. "I didn't get anything for Parker. Do you think it would be okay if I did?"

"Kids like presents," Emma, aged eleven, told Brennan bluntly. "He's not going to be mad if you get him something."

"I'm more concerned about what his father will think," said Brennan, remembering their kiss, which had only been a perfunctory thing even if from a technical standpoint it had been the best kiss she'd ever had.

"Parents like it when people remember their kids," said Amy softly, and Brennan recalled that almost the only nice word that Booth had ever said about Zack had been said after Zack had gifted him with the robot for Parker.

"I don't know what Parker would want," admitted Brennan. She and Parker got along well enough when they spent time together, but that was because Parker had inherited his father's kind heart. (Metaphorically of course; hearts were muscles and therefore neither kind nor unkind, and she had never actually seen Parker's medical records, although she suspected that if he had had a heart problem she would have been aware of it. She could have helped find a specialist like she'd done with Hayley's cystic fibrosis. Hayley's breathing was much better now than it had been prior to Brennan calling in a favor with an expert.)

"What does he like?" prompted Amy. "He's a little boy. Superheroes?"

"Hockey," Brennan added. "Skateboards, videogames, comicbooks. He always wants me to tell him which animals pee the longest and fart the most."

Beside Brennan, Max cackled more than it was worth.

"I know exactly what you can get him," said Hayley with enthusiasm and, happily, no hint of a gasp. "When I was in the hospital they gave me this stupid thing and Mom said I should be grateful and we would give it to Goodwill, but Parker will like it so he can have it instead."

Amy snapped her fingers. "I think you're on to something, Hayley."

"The Disgusting Science Kit," Hayley told Brennan. "There's snot and poop. It's gross. It's perfect for a boy from a scientist."

"It's in the trunk of our car," said Amy. "Take it with our blessing."

"I'll make a donation to Goodwill," said Brennan gratefully. "So they don't miss out."

"And you can drop the present off for Parker tomorrow morning," said Max meaningfully.

"I'm not going over to Booth's apartment on Christmas morning before he has to drive Parker to Vermont to be with his mother," Brennan objected.

"Why not?" asked Russ. "He came to our family Christmas."

Russ and Max grinned at each other. Brennan didn't like it one bit. This was the part of her adolescence that she hadn't minded missing: the part whether her father and her brother decided that there ought to be a romantic connection where there was none and made jokes about it as if they knew her better than she knew herself.

"Leave it outside the door if you have to," said Max. "But you go over there tomorrow morning."

* * *

Brennan did as her father and brother directed. She left the science kit for Parker and the signed hockey puck for Booth (which was rather expensive, but she didn't think anyone would steal from an FBI agent) outside the door.

She had missed even her rescheduled flight to Peru.

It was a surprisingly acceptable state of affairs.

As she crept down the hall, the door to Booth's apartment flew open. As early as it was, someone inside had heard the soft brush of the wrapped boxes against the door.

" _Bones_!" Parker hollered. "Where are you going?"

"I was just dropping off your presents," she said. "You gave me yours last night."

"We had to get someone to help us jump the car battery in the gas station," Parker informed her artlessly. "But it was okay because we made your family happy."

"You did," she admitted. "My niece Hayley helped me pick out your present. I hope you like it."

By now, Booth had followed Parker into the hall and was standing framed by the doorway, a look of amusement on his face. "Come in, Bones," he invited. "We have hot chocolate, and you can watch Parker open his gift." He waved her inside. "See how grateful a six-year-old can be, no matter what it is," he muttered under his breath.

It didn't feel right.

Family holidays were for people who were not Temperance Brennan.

But she let Booth drag her through the door, and she let Parker vibrate with excitement at the words "snot" and "poop." Booth was only slightly less pleased when he saw the hockey puck.

It was nothing next to what they'd given her family.

It was nothing next to the fact that without Booth's steady encouragement, she would never have even considered reconciling with Max or Russ or agreed to become an emergency guardian for Hayley and Emma.

She had a disposable camera (the only kind permitted in the prison's trailer) in her purse, and she used the last shot to take a picture of Parker lying on Booth's chest as Booth leaned back in a chair, both of them laughing uproariously and accented with tinsel from Booth's tree.

She meant to give the photograph to Booth on his next birthday, but there was a case, and then another, and it slipped half-forgotten to the bottom of her desk.

 _3\. The Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (S5)_

She couldn't entirely disagree with Parker when he started to insist that Booth ought to have a girlfriend. It was true. Booth's life was Parker and work and very little else.

It was almost disappointing when it turned out that Parker only wanted a girlfriend for his father because in his eight-year-old mind, a girlfriend meant a swimming pool.

" _Couldn't you be his girlfriend?"_

" _That would be inappropriate."_

" _Why?"_

" _Because we work together."_

" _That's a stupid reason."_

As if she'd needed someone else to tell her that she and Booth ought to be romantically involved.

The fact of the matter was that she knew perfectly well that she adored him.

The more important fact of the matter was that she could never have been what Booth deserved or needed. They were friends and co-workers, and she was appreciative of that without mourning that they could never be more.

That didn't stop her from offering Booth and Parker a key to her apartment complex and inviting them to use the swimming pool as her guests whenever they liked.

A few weekends later, Booth let her know that they would be taking her up on her invitation and asked her to join them.

She agreed with a flutter of nervousness.

On weekday mornings, the apartment complex's pool was full of men and women getting in a workout before their morning commutes. Sometimes Brennan joined them if she hadn't been able to get to a martial arts lesson recently.

On weekends, the pool was full of splashing, shouting children. Brennan never joined them. It wasn't that she disliked children per se. Of course she liked Parker. Of course she liked Emma and Hayley. But, as Booth had often pointed out, she was not a mother herself. After asking Booth to be a sperm donor so that she could have a baby, and watching him dissolve into hysteria before her eyes at the idea of not being a fulltime parent to another son or daughter, she had resigned herself to the fact that she never would be.

Showing up at the pool on a weekend afternoon without a child of her own would have been no less strange than showing up at a playgroup without a child. There was no societal role there for her. She was better off writing or preparing for the next week's work. That was acceptable. There were roles for all sorts of people in society, and if this was one she would never fill, there was no shame or grief in that. No one could do everything.

Booth and Parker brought her into the corner of the world she had never expected to explore. Together in the pool, they joined the other children and parents playing Marco Polo and Ping Pong Scramble.

The scent of meatballs wafted toward them. Some of the other families (not that Brennan and Booth and Parker were a family) had decided to have a picnic beside the pool.

Booth's stomach rumbled audibly.

"Eating by the pool is allowed?" he asked.

"Obviously," Brennan agreed.

"I want one of those meatball subs," Booth declared.

"Tell them you're with the FBI and you're confiscating it for national security," suggested Parker.

"You know that's not how it works," Booth rebuked mildly.

"Those came from the sub shop on the corner," Brennan informed Booth and Parker. "Maybe we can go when we're done swimming."

"No," Parker whined, sounding just as his father did when the world was not to his liking. Brennan stared hard at the water to hide her laugh. She didn't mind laughing at Booth, but she wouldn't have wanted Parker to think that she was laughing at him. "I'm not tired yet, and if we eat we'll have to wait an hour before we go back in the pool."

"There's no scientific basis for that," said Brennan, just as Booth objected that he had been in war zones where they hadn't observed such niceties and no one had been the worse for it. Booth and Brennan smiled at each other. There was always something special about those times when they reached the same conclusion at the same time after taking completely divergent mental paths.

"Look, I'm hungry now," said Booth. "And you are too, you just don't know it."

Parker rolled his eyes. "So _you_ go get food and let Bones and me stay here."

Booth raised an eyebrow at Brennan. "I'm completely qualified as a lifeguard," she told him. "Besides, CPR is required as part of being a registered foster parent."

Not that her status as a foster parent was as vital as it had been a few short years before. Russ had married Amy and formally adopted her daughters. Emma and Hayley Hollister had officially become Emma and Hayley Brennan, and Russ and Amy's living will specified that Russ' younger sister Temperance was to take custody of their minor daughters in the event of an emergency whether she was qualified or not. The legal necessity was becoming less and less likely, as well. Russ was walking the straight and narrow. Emma had just turned a very responsible fourteen, although Hayley's medical issues being what they were, Brennan thought that she would take custody of Hayley even if disaster struck after Emma's eighteenth birthday. There was no reason to set Emma up to fail Hayley the way her own parents had set Russ up to fail her.

"I don't need a lifeguard," said Parker.

"But you're okay with Bones?" Booth prompted.

"Yes," said Parker witheringly, and Booth pulled himself out of the pool in pursuit of the siren call of a meatball sub.

Brennan took a moment to remark that Booth looked even more attractive than usual with the water dripping off of his bare back and chest. She wasn't the only one at the pool who watched, but she was the only one Booth winked at as he left.

Parker and Brennan resumed playing games, which now consisted of diving contests.

It wasn't until the diving contest had reached its final round that Brennan realized that she had never been alone with Parker for so long. She had stayed with him for five or ten minutes while Booth took a phone call or paid a bill or used the bathroom, but Booth had never simply left the building for what might end up being a full hour. There hadn't been any problems, though. She was fine. Parker was fine. If things became less than fine, they would retreat to her apartment and tell Booth to meet them there.

Parker dove smoothly into the water; like his father, he was a natural athlete. Brennan excitedly cheered for him.

The next little boy, who was at least two years older than Parker but not nearly as genetically advantaged, hit the water with a painful-sounding bellyflop. Parker swam over to him and began to instruct him as to how to tighten his body and enter the water more smoothly even if the bellyflop had been "really cool" in its own way.

"Your son is a wonderful boy," another child's mother confided to Brennan as they watched.

"He's not my son," said Brennan reflexively, always wanting to be accurate about these things. "But he is wonderful. He takes after his father."

"Hold onto that man, then," the woman advised. Brennan saw her now and then in the elevator on the way to work but did not know her name, much less why she should take advice from her. It didn't seem to matter, though, as the woman's children were suddenly tugging on her bathing suit and asking about ice cream.

It was odd, though, that this perfect stranger could not tell at a glance that Brennan was not now and would never be a mother. The woman was a mother herself; shouldn't she have seen the signs that something was lacking in Brennan?

"That was excellent," Brennan informed Parker when he appeared at her side.

"Thank you," said Parker. He flashed her a mischievous grin. "You should dive now."

"It's a game for children," she pointed out, but the children had left the pool. For the moment, it was Brennan and Parker and no one else.

"It's okay if you can only bellyflop," said Parker consolingly. "Sports are about everyone getting a chance and having fun, not about being the best, even though you should always try your hardest."

Brennan had known for years that Booth was a very, very good father, but sometimes some new piece of evidence impressed her all the same.

"I can do better than a bellyflop," she told Parker. "How about a cannonball?"

"Those are the most fun!" Parker agreed, and they took turns cannonballing into the pool for the next ten minutes. That was when Booth arrived with a bag of food in one hand.

"Aren't you ready to get out yet?" he asked Parker.

"No," said Parker. "Bones and I are having fun."

Booth unwrapped a meatball sandwich and stood far too close to the pool with it. "Doesn't this look good to you?" he asked.

Parker shook his head. Parker chose swimming over food. He had worked hard trying to find a girlfriend with a pool for his father, and he was going to enjoy the pool now that the had it.

Brennan reached for the ladder near the diving board and slipped out of the pool.

"Bones? You ready for lunch? I have a veggie sub for you," said Booth. "It doesn't look too bad, for something with no meat in it."

"Maybe Parker and I should go one more time before lunch," she told Booth.

Parker laughed. "Yeah!"

"Do what one more time? Dive?" asked Booth around a mouthful of his sloppy sandwich.

"Cannonball!" shouted Parker, as the splash drenched Booth, and his sandwich too.

Brennan and Parker laughed.

Booth ranted for quite some time about how they had ruined his sandwich, but Brennan could feel that the underlying affection he had for Parker wrapped itself around her, too.

It was almost as strange as the feeling she'd had when she'd been assumed to be Parker's mother.

(That had been so odd that she'd never told Booth. Not even years later when they were married with two babies of their own.)

 _4\. The Twisted Bones in the Melted Truck (S6)_

Booth loved Brennan and Brennan loved Booth.

Brennan was never going to be able to give Booth what he needed and deserved.

Booth was too romantic to understand that, and so Brennan had taken it upon herself to tell him _no_ for his own good.

When he'd returned from a war zone with Hannah in tow, Brennan had taken it upon herself to make certain that Hannah would make him happy in a way that Brennan herself could not. She told Hannah exactly what to give Booth for a housewarming gift; she instructed Hannah to stop getting in trouble and worrying Booth. She saved Hannah's life after inspecting her x-rays, and she gave Hannah the sunglasses off of her forehead when Hannah demanded them.

Hannah was exactly Booth's type- beautiful, daring, intelligent, accomplished, and ambivalent about having children.

It wasn't pleasant to be with Booth and Hannah, but at the same time it was because it made Booth happy. Brennan could detach herself from her lingering and useless feelings for Booth.

To remind herself of what was at stake, she offered up one of her fondest memories of Parker to Booth on the day that Parker met Hannah.

" _How did it go with Hannah and Parker, by the way? Did they meet?"_

" _Yeah, yeah, it was good. I mean, I'm telling you, she really is amazing with him."_

" _Why wouldn't she be? Everyone loves her."_

" _Right? Yeah, I think it's gonna work out."_

" _I'm glad. The three of you can come over and swim any time you like."_

" _Okay."_

" _I know how much Parker loves the pool."_

That evening, Hannah was the one who brought Parker to meet Booth at the diner after their case was concluded. Parker had, indeed, decided that he liked Hannah after some early trepidation. "We can go to Bones' house and swim," Parker told Hannah. "She can do a cannonball."

Booth and Brennan confirmed that of course Booth and Hannah and Parker could use Brennan's pool.

No one would mistake Brennan for Parker's mother this time.

No one in the diner could have mistaken Brennan for a part of the family that Hannah, Booth, and Parker had suddenly formed.

It was right.

It was as it needed to be.

It just hurt more than she had expected.

When she said goodbye to Booth and Parker and Hannah, Brennan returned to work. It was well into the night and she was alone. Still, there was always paperwork to complete and bones not related to a murder to be identified. Work soothed her when her personal life, or lack thereof, was more than she could stand.

She dug deep into her desk for a file she had not needed in quite some time.

Deep inside it was the photograph she had taken of Parker and Booth several Christmases before.

Alone in her office, she cried, just as she had when she'd opened her presents on the day she'd first met Parker Booth.

And a part of her realized that she had been wishing for Hannah, her new friend, to fail to win Parker's approval.

Even though that was completely at odds with her plan.

 _5\. The Warrior in the Wuss (S7)_

Later, she realized that she'd become everything she'd always hated about a certain kind of mother: possessive, self-righteous, and willfully blind. She blamed the hormones and lightly scolded herself, rational scientist that she was, for succumbing.

Even later, she realized that she'd been just as terrified of Parker as Hannah had been a year before, with both more of an excuse and less of an excuse. More, because of the overwhelming life change that a new baby heralded. Less, because she _knew_ Parker and she _knew_ that he had inherited his father's open and generous personality.

Booth had agreed to let Rebecca take Parker to England around the time that Brennan had become pregnant with Christine, the child she had rarely been able to admit that she desperately wanted. Parker hadn't been there to see Booth and Brennan move in together, or to see Brennan's body growing heavy with his new sister, or to see the house they purchased together evolve from a ruin to a home. Parker hadn't helped Booth pack up the bedroom that had been his for as long as he could remember and recreate it in the Mighty Hut.

Instead, Parker arrived with a sullen look on his face and a secretive air about his actions. He was ten years old, he informed them, and he was not going to tell them where he had been, what he had been doing, or why he had been cutting up their photographs, gym bags, and lab coats.

Brennan, following the path of millions of second-mothers before her, was suspicious of her husband's first child. Parker had every reason to resent Christine, after all. Christine would have her father beside her all day every day for the whole of her childhood. Thanks to Rebecca's new life in England, Parker would be lucky to see his father once a year. Where Parker had once mattered more to Booth than anyone or anything else in the world, now there was Christine- and Brennan, too. There was an anthropological necessity for Parker to seek superior status within the family structure, and if that meant eliminating Temperance's daughter….

She was _Temperance_ to Parker all of a sudden. In the past, he had gleefully called her _Bones_ in mimicry of his father. Now his young lips stumbled over the given name that no one close to her actually used. There was a distance between them and she had no idea how to cross it.

She didn't want to cross it if it meant that Christine would not be protected.

Her parents hadn't protected her.

Christine would always be safe.

"I found some evidence in his room," Brennan told Booth after Parker cut up one of her lab coats.

"Evidence?" asked Booth, the same Booth who when she'd met him hadn't even mentioned Parker's existence. "Parker is my son. He's not a suspect."

But when Brennan pushed Booth, Booth confronted Parker.

Parker, exhausted and jetlagged, had cried and yelled and explained that he had only taken the photographs and the lab coat to build a mobile for Christine. "So she'll know me the next time I come to visit," he explained plaintively.

He had the same warm, generous spirit that he had always had.

For all that she now had everything she had been afraid to want, Brennan should have known.

Brennan resolved to do better with Parker.

He was never again going to be the stepchild on the outside looking in, who thought that he needed a mobile as a stand-in presence in his own home.

Four years passed before she was able to make good on her private promise.

 _And 1. High Treason in the Holiday Season (S11)_

Three weeks before Thanksgiving, Brennan walked into her bedroom to find her husband staring at a photograph. That was not an uncommon occurrence. He had lost Jared short months before; it had been less than a year since his grandfather's death. She knew that he missed them even though he hadn't seen them often.

When she sat beside him on the bed, though, the photograph wasn't one that she had expected to see. It was the one she had taken of Booth and Parker on Christmas morning eight years before. After several years' delay, she had presented it to Booth, and it now sat framed in their bedroom.

"I miss him," said Booth, with a hint of shame that she didn't understand.

"I do, too," she agreed. "Maybe he can come see us for the holidays."

"Rebecca's never going to go for that," said Booth, and he put the picture back where it belonged and made himself busy rearranging diapers in baby Hank's room.

"Rebecca isn't going to offer to send him if you don't ask," Brennan whispered aloud. Once, she had refrained from suggesting as much to Booth. She hadn't been his wife; she hadn't been a mother. Now she was both.

There was no reason that she couldn't ask Parker herself whether he was willing to join them for Thanksgiving and then ask Rebecca for permission.

As the weeks passed, Brennan's plans grew more elaborate. The Flyers would be playing the Nashville Predators the day after Thanksgiving, and it would take Booth less than two hours by Amtrak to get to Philadelphia to see the game.

She bought tickets behind the glass.

Contrary to what Booth thought, she knew not only what the Flyers were called but where he most fantasized about sitting.

She could fulfill some of her husband's fantasies.

He was never going to bring that motorcycle into her house, though. The jet ski was negotiable.

She became equally delighted with the idea of surprising Booth and fearful that something would undo her plans and disappoint Booth horribly. The past few years had been hard on him. Little Hank was almost the only good thing that had happened, and while he was an extraordinarily welcome addition to their lives, he could hardly make Booth forget the destruction of their first marital home or the time in prison or the crisis of faith or the deaths of three men that he had loved. Booth didn't need to get his hopes up for something that might never happen.

She almost told Booth the truth the fourth time he objected to her habit of keeping secrets, not that it was a habit at all. She texted Parker as much.

 _NO!_ Parker texted back in all caps. _PLANE JUST LANDED. GONNA BE GREAT. REMEMBER THE CANNONBALL? BETTER THAN THAT._

She bowed to Parker's judgement. _Sure you don't want me to pick you up?_

 _Better surprise if you don't. Where r u?_

 _Have the cab take you to the Royal Diner._

 _Got it._

Watching Booth embrace Parker in the Royal Diner and admit that perhaps he didn't object to all secrets was good.

Hearing Angela ask, just before Thanksgiving dinner, if it wasn't nice to have all of her boys together was even better. Parker was officially her stepson, and had been for some time. It was neither frightening nor impossible.

The day after Thanksgiving, the five of them decorated the Christmas tree. She carefully posed Parker, Christine, and Hank for photographs so that she and Booth would have some of all three of them together. Early in the afternoon, she sent Booth and Parker off to the game so that they would have at least some time alone together.

She was going to suggest to Rebecca that Parker ought to visit them for a minimum of one month that summer. Rebecca had been the one to move across the ocean, after all. A month still left Booth barely half the time with Parker than the traditional every-other-weekend arrangement had given him.

She went to bed that night soon after the children did. Hank had been over-excited by the last two days (not to mention by Booth's decision that his lastborn child's first solid food ought to be a drumstick) that she fully expected him to wake in the middle of the night in need of his mother.

She roused briefly when Booth crawled into bed beside her. "Did the Whatzits win?" she asked sleepily. When there was no reason to do otherwise, she pretended that she didn't know what the Flyers were called. They were Booth's domain. It wasn't her job to know what they were called, or that they were unlikely to make the playoffs but were still doing better than most of the professional sports franchises in Philadelphia, several of which had been performing atrociously for some time.

"Won. Overtime," said Booth. "They might get the wildcard after all."

"Good," she said, too sleepy to pretend not to know what that meant.

"Thank you, Bones." His lips brushed her cheek and his hand squeezed her arm. "You're the best. I love you."

"I love you," she answered before drifting back to sleep.

* * *

An hour or two later, Hank woke her right on schedule. She turned off the baby monitor so that it wouldn't rouse Booth and padded down the hall to Hank's nursery where she saw to it that he was fed and changed.

Hank's eyes widened and his chin trembled when she moved to place him back in his crib. "Not ready for that?" she asked softly. "All right, you don't have to. You're such a good baby about letting us sleep through the night most of the time.

A scuffle in the kitchen disproved her theory. "Well, someone's up," she corrected herself to Hank. "Let's see who, unless it's an intruder, in which case I don't want you to worry. I don't have a gun on me but I'm sure I can disable him until your daddy gets a clean shot at him."

As it happened, no shooting was needed. Parker was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and a turkey sandwich. He looked at Brennan through his eyelashes, slightly abashed.

"Look at that," Brennan told Hank. "You aren't the only Booth man who thinks that 3:30 in the morning is a great time for a meal."

"Sorry, Bones," said Parker. It didn't escape her that she was _Bones_ again. "It's jetlag. I know I should be tired but I'm awake and I'm starving."

"You're eating the right thing," Brennan noted. "Tryptophan."

"It's okay that I raided the refrigerator?"

"Of course," she assured him. "This is your home."

Parker half-smiled. "It's like a time warp. Dad took the bedroom I had in his old apartment and moved it into your other house, and then you moved it into this house, so it still looks like it did when I was nine even though I've never been here before."

She shifted Hank in her arms and sat beside Parker at the table. Parker reached out with one hand to caress Hank's small arm, and Hank burbled in response.

"How would you like your room to look?" she asked Parker. "I can see how you might not want the Wolverine sheets anymore."

"Actually, the Wolverine sheets are still really cool," said Parker. He sighed. "Don't bother changing it. You'll probably have a new house before I visit you again anyway."

"I hope not," she told him. "I know that you're busy with school, and that it's a very long flight to get here-"

"Shorter when it's in first class," he interrupted. "Thanks again for that."

"You're welcome. It isn't your fault that your father and your mother live thousands of miles apart. If you have to travel between them, you should be able to do so in comfort."

Parker grinned. "Dad says no fourteen-year-old kid needs to fly first class."

"No one _needs_ to fly first class. It's about having the money to afford it," Brennan agreed. "Fourteen," she mused, as if Parker's age was somehow a surprise to her. Parker looked at her curiously. "Did you know that I was one year older than you when my family left me?"

"I guess," said Parker. "Max told me some of the stories at your wedding but everyone else kept telling him to shut up." He grinned again. "Which sucked, because he was the only one with anything interesting to say."

"I was fifteen," Brennan continued. "I was fifteen years old and it was right before Christmas. My parents left my brother Russ and me to go on the run. They were bank robbers. They were afraid we'd be hurt if we came with them, but they left our Christmas presents wrapped in a closet. Russ found them and put them under the tree. I insisted that I wouldn't open them until Mom and Dad came home, and the next week Russ left and sent me to foster care."

The story rolled off her tongue infinitely more easily than it had ten years before when she'd first told Angela, when Parker had been a tiny boy on the other side of pandemic-proof glass.

Parker didn't say anything, so Brennan kept talking. "There are a lot of truly well-meaning people in the foster care system, but I didn't meet very many of them. Some of them wanted me for the paycheck and to baby-sit their own children, and those were the better ones."

Parker had stopped eating. His eyes, dark like his father's, were locked on hers.

"I didn't have a home. I was pulled out of one family and put down in the middle of another and I never knew when or why it would happen."

"I'm sorry," said Parker.

"I didn't tell you so that you could be sorry. You weren't even born yet, so it couldn't possibly have been your fault. I told you because I want you to know that I mean it when I tell you that this is your home and you're always welcome here. There will always be a room with your name on it wherever your father is and wherever your brother and sister and I are. You haven't been displaced in any way by Christine or Hank. I'm not your wicked stepmother."

"I didn't think you were," said Parker. "I told you two to get together, like, years before you did."

She couldn't argue the point. He had.

"Can I hold him?" Parker asked, gesturing at Hank.

Hank was mostly asleep. "Yes," she agreed. "But he's sleepy and his stomach is full, so be careful not to jostle him."

"All right." Parker glanced at the baby in his arms and then at Brennan. "I could never be worried about being displaced by this little guy," he promised.

"Good," said Brennan. "You're very young and very intelligent and I wouldn't want you to waste your time worrying about something that would never happen."

For a long moment, they were both quiet and Brennan admired the image before her. Her son and her stepson. Her Hank and her Parker. Her boys. Her family.

"Did you ever open the presents?" asked Parker at last.

"I did. Thirteen years later. It was the day I met you for the first time."

"I don't remember that," said Parker. "It seems like I've always known you."

Like his father, Parker was good at saying the right thing at the right time.

"You shouldn't kill Agent Andy, though," said Parker. "You should just have him in a coma for the next book so that in the dream in his head he and Kathy can fight aliens in outer space with lightsabers."

His father had definitely told him to say that.

* * *

When Hank and Parker had been returned to their respective rooms, Brennan slipped back into her own. She could tell that Booth was awake. It was still almost impossible to leave their shared bed without waking him, although it had gotten easier over the years.

"Kids all okay?" he asked.

"Yes. Hank is still off of his schedule because of the holiday, but he's sleeping now."

"And Parker?"

There was something in his tone that told her that he'd overheard at least part of their conversation. "He's wonderful, Booth. You have every right to be proud of him."

"I know that. But thank you."

"How much did you hear?"

She felt him shrug against the sheets. "Some. I got up to make sure that you were all right, and I couldn't help overhearing. You told him about your family."

"I wanted him to know. I wanted him to understand _his_ family. Was I wrong?"

"No. You were perfect, Bones." Booth ran his hand along her side in a proprietary sort of way. "I just can't believe the kid was eating again. You should have seen what he had at the game. It's like feeding Aubrey."

"He's a teenage boy. He needs it."

"Maybe he'll finally be sorry about that meatball sub and the swimming pool," Booth muttered. "That was never as funny as you two thought it was."

"Perhaps," agreed Brennan. "Sometimes new evidence can completely alter the way you see someone or something."

Booth shouldn't have known what the meant, but he reached over and hugged her. Like his children, Booth was extraordinary. She loved having him in her life and accepted that his happiness was inextricably linked to her own.

But Agent Andy still wasn't going to fight aliens in outer space.

 **The End**


End file.
